


Subito Pianissimo

by Moonsheen



Series: Wolf Tone [3]
Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Future Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 16:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moonsheen/pseuds/Moonsheen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Three on one,” mused Nagisa. “That was a bad fight to pick.”</p><p>Ikari Shinji, 18, takes the train home. (post-series)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Subito Pianissimo

**Author's Note:**

> Subito Pianissimo is a musical term which indicates sudden quiet.
> 
> This story is set between Wolf Tone on F# and Wolf Coda. As with the last two, this is mainly set after the TV ending, with bits and pieces of EoE and manga-canon existing as Third Impact weirdness. Thanks to my gf, for the title and for putting up with my night owl habits in the name of this story. Apologies to Stas, whose birthday it was when I wrote this story. Um. Happy ... birthday...?

Nagisa held the overhead railing. He didn't say anything. Of course he didn't. They were on the train. People didn't talk on the train. Who'd do a weird thing like that?

Shinji pulled the sleeve of his coat farther over his hand. The bandages itched. No one looked at him, but he could feel eyes on him anyway. He ducked his head. He tried to shrink in his seat. It wasn't hard. The car hadn't filled up to the awful rush hour press just yet, but Nagisa leaned over the seat anyway.

The train stopped. A cheerful mechanical voice announced the stop. Feet shifted. Five sets of shoes left the subway car. Six more stepped on. It got busy around this time. Please stand clear, said the voice. Please stand clear. The doors shut. The train lurched. Shinji's head lurched with it. His forehead fell against Nagisa's winter coat. No one could see him. Nagisa stood in the way. He stared down at Nagisa's battered shoes. Had he always worn trainers? When had he gotten those? The UN, maybe? But why did they look so old? Shinji thought about asking. He didn't ask. You didn't talk on trains.

“Shinji?” murmured Nagisa, absolving Shinji of all weirdness with a single quizzical tip of his head. No matter how strange he could be, his roommate was always stranger.

“I feel sick,” Shinji mumbled into Nagisa's coat.

“We'll be home soon,” said Nagisa.

“I feel really sick.”

The train slid to another halt. Nagisa put a hand on his shoulder to steady him.

“The doctor called it a hairline fracture,” he said, “they said it will heal just fine.”

Shinji wished his shoulder didn't jump a little at that.

“There will be some swelling,” continued Nagisa, with a voice as steady as the train windows, “and you will have to rest your hand, but they said that it will heal in about three weeks.”

The doctors said a lot of things. Shinji couldn’t remember most of it.

 

(He remembered the nurse glaring at him.

“You should be more responsible,” she'd said, as she'd taped his hand. She saw his cello case pushed up against the wall. She’d seen his records. “You're studying music, aren’t you? Think about your future.”)

 

“I don't care,” said Shinji.

Nagisa peered at him. Commuters glanced uneasily their way, but they couldn't see Shinji. Just Nagisa and -- well. He stood out a lot already.

“It will not be permanent,” he said, “you should regain full movement in that time. Humans have such resilience, don’t they?”

“I don't care.”

“It is truly admirable.”

Shinji's fingers twitched. It hurt. It hurt a lot. “I don't care if I ever play again.”

“Ah,” said Nagisa. “You don't mean that.”

The other Kaworu never would've pressed, thought Shinji, meanly, before he realized: no, he had no idea what Kaworu would have done. He'd known that one for a day and a half.

Stand clear, called the subway. Shinji pressed his head against Nagisa's stomach.

“You didn't even ask me 'why,'” he said, a little miserably.

“Why...?” Commuters crowded in, Nagisa let himself lean in a bit more. “I don’t have to, do I? They say that those men started it, and that you defended yourself. That is what anyone would suppose, after all. There were three of them and one of you. You are ten years younger and thirty pounds lighter than any of them, and, anyway, the commission will make it so that nothing about this will be anywhere on any record. My superiors are very insistent that you live quietly.”

Shinji went back to staring at Nagisa's sneakers. He felt Nagisa's hand slide up his shoulder, just a little. He could feel the slight crook of his index and middle fingers.

“But of course,” added Nagisa, and Shinji imagined his eyes were very wide when he said this, “that is not what happened, is it?”

It wasn't. Not really. Shinji couldn't actually remember much about what happened last night. He'd been home late from a practice. It'd been a ways out. The train car had been quiet -- been very quiet -- until those three guys had come on. They didn't see him in the corner, or else they didn't care. Their shadows were long and vicious in the lights of the city outside. They didn't care about the volume of their voices. They'd probably been drunk.

“They were loud,” said Shinji, in a dull, empty sort of voice.  


 

(“Oi, oi, but did you SEE the way she was busting out?”

“Kind of hard to miss. Man, but those girls are always just--”

“She shouldn't go out like that alone. Kind of stupid. Bet she was totally lost. That's kind of irresponsible!”

“What, were you going to help her?”

“Maybe. Could think of a few ways to help her.”

“Haha, like you had a shot!”)

 

“Loud?”

“They said things,” said Shinji. His shoulders dropped a bit.

 

( “Oh come off. She was a foreigner wasn't she? You know girls like that! A kiss is just a 'hello' where she's from. They'll basically do it with anyone.”

“Even a guy like you?”

“Haha, that'd I pay to see!”)  


 

“They were really noisy,” said Shinji. His bandaged fingers tightened around his knee.  


 

(“No, really. My brother's friend totally dated this girl from, like, England. And I hear she let him do the nastiest shit. On, like, the second date. It's just the way they say 'I like you' there.”

“That's not true. So, you're saying that girl would blow you if you helped her with her bags?”

“Well I'm saying she'd blow me if I helped her with her bags. She'd probably have some standards. You guys would’ve maybe least help her back to the hotel.”

“Well. I'd help her back to a hotel.”)

 

“I asked them to stop,” said Shinji, it wasn't hard to say after all. It felt like it had happened to a completely different person.  


 

(“You're all really kind of stupid aren't you?”

The men looked up. Shinji pulled himself out of his seat. The lights from the city were streaking by really fast. It must have made him look a little taller than he was, because the nearest guy jumped a bit as he appeared at the other end of the train.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“Did you talk to her?” asked Shinji. “That girl?”)

 

“Did they?” asked Nagisa.

“Sort of,” admitted Shinji.  


 

(“That's kind of rude isn't it?” asked the second guy. “Just coming up like that. Do I know you?”

“Did you know her name?” asked Shinji. He walked towards them.

“What's it to you?” asked the first one, the one who thought he’d had a shot. He got out of his seat. He saw Shinji’s bags and his university ID. None of them saw the cello case he'd stowed in the overhead. Shinji would later wonder if things had been different, if they'd seen that.

“She might not have even needed directions,” said Shinji, pausing a door away from them. “She probably lives here. That's kind of stupid, isn't it? You really think she'd go out with any of you guys?”

The train passed under a bridge. The third guy stood up. They'd realized now that Shinji wasn't that big under his lumpy coat. They'd realized that he was alone. “I don't see how that's any of your business.”

Shinji's stared at the first guy. The one who's brother's friend dated the English girl. “You think she'd do all those things? How do you know she likes doing that stuff? I mean, did you ask her? You didn't even ask her if she needed help, but I guess you wouldn't really be asking her that if you did, huh? Would you want to know, anyway?”

“Oi, kid,” said the third guy, warning in his breath.

“How old she is? When did she come to Japan? Where does she go to school? What's her job? Is she happy? Is she sad? Is she angry? Why is she angry? Why is she alone?”

“I think he's on something,” said the second, backing away a little. The train stopped. The doors opened. No one got on. The doors shut. The train started moving again.

“But I guess you're fine with her being alone,” continued Shinji. His hand curled around the pole. He was close enough he could make out the hairs on the first guy's chin. He was close enough he could see their nice watches. Their cool haircuts. “I mean. That's better, isn't it? She's alone. She's really messed up and afraid. So of course she has to rely on you. Of course she has to let you do whatever you want to her.”

“You're starting to piss me off,” said the first guy.

“You said you wanted to help her,” said Shinji, his hand went tight around the pole. “So that's okay, I guess. You must really like her. You really want to know her. So long as she's exactly all those things you made up just now. I bet you wouldn't even care if she told you her your name. You just hope she'll let you jack off on her breasts.”

And, in the broken lights of the ruined city outside, the first guy asked: “What are you, some kind of pervert?”

Shinji smiled.

He let go of the pole.)

 

“Three on one,” mused Nagisa. “That was a bad fight to pick.”

“It wasn't hard.” Muscle memory. Basic self-defense. They'd taught him a few moves to help his synch rates, back when he was a pilot. Ayanami could mimic anything she was shown. Asuka had been trained to do it since she was five. He'd been terrible, but terrible by NERV's standards meant 'not bad' in the real world. “They weren't really expecting it. It wasn't hard. After the first guy went down, they all sort of stopped looking like...”

“People?” asked Nagisa. He didn't ask it to be cruel. He was genuinely curious.

“They looked like _someone_ ,” said Shinji. He put his head in his uninjured hand. “I'm the worst.”

“I don't believe that.”

“I said I hurt those guys.”

“Maybe.”

“I think I broke one of their noses.”

“And a few teeth, from the report,” allowed Nagisa.

“They weren’t anything,” said Shinji, his voice came in a rush, almost lost to the sound of the doors hissing. Open, shut. Open, shut. The car was emptier than it'd been before. They were a bit of a way down the line. The police station and the hospital was far from the apartment. “Asuka.”

This earned him a blank look. “The Second?”

Shinji didn't have the energy to nod. “It's like I did it to her.”

“Like you hit her?”

“No,” said Shinji. “Worse. Those things. They were saying.”

He didn't elaborate. He probably should have. This Kaworu didn't always know as much about people as the first one -- except the strange times that he did. Still, Nagisa didn't ask for the specifics of what they’d said. He leaned closer, cast a glance out the window at the blurring lines of the seashore, and asked, without inflection: “Did you?”

“No,” said Shinji. He hated himself for how squeaky the protest came out, “but I thought about it. Sometimes.”

He thought about a lot of things where Asuka was concerned:

 

(He thought about walking to school with her in the mornings, and her strict orders not to walk too close. “You people always get the wrong idea!” she used to say, but when it rained and she forgot her umbrella she'd always crowded him, shoulder to shoulder. She didn't know that was weird. He hated it. He hated walking close to anyone. He hated the time Toji saw them come in like that and hooted for two days straight. It wasn't as exciting as Toji might've hoped. Asuka didn't think anything of it, and anyway she'd usually yell at him for tipping water on her too much and holding it too low and he'd be banished to ducking behind her, half soaked and miserable.)

 

(He thought about all those love letters, and the way she'd dump them in the trash at the end of every day.

“Do you ever read them?” he'd asked her, watching her jam them into the bin at home.

“They're the same,” said Asuka. “What's the point?

“Didn't you say you were trying to practice your kanji?”

“Smartass,” said Asuka. He acted like it didn't really matter, but he sulked for days after that. He didn't think too much about why it had bothered him so much, watching her throw out all the letters that day. It was stupid, and people who sent letters like that were stupid, and anyway it'd only been a really stupid joke. He was never that good at being funny.)

 

(He thought a lot -- a real lot -- about that time she'd crawled into bed with him. It was hard not to think about that time. He'd never actually slept in a bed with someone before, let alone a girl. In retrospect, the experience was a whole lot less exciting than locker room conversation might have suggested, but that didn't mean he didn't think about it, and it wasn't like Asuka didn't talk about her breasts all the time anyway, so who could really blame him if he looked... even if it was just for like a second before she called for her mother and he realized how stupid the whole thing was. It's not even like there was much there, what was wrong with him, why did he let her talk him into kissing her, why did she ask if she was just going to rag on him anyway, why--)

 

(It wasn't the last time he heard her call out to her mother. Funny, though, he never really thought much about that. (But when did it happen?) He thought a lot more about the color of an Evangelion's intestines. He'd never really thought they'd even had intestines. Until he saw the pieces, dangling from the jaws of those white monsters-- (But when did THAT happen?))

 

(Sometimes, though, he did think about her hands around his neck – or was it his hands around her neck? He never could remember which it was. Shinji never was any good at keeping things like that in the right order.)

 

(He thought about the beach. After everything was over. He thought about waking up alone on the beach, where she wasn't. He thought about waking up in the hotel in Austria, where she was. He thought a lot about that hotel room, sometimes: it'd been after the everything. He'd never thought of her in a place like that. A place where there wasn't some kind of war. Some people were dead. Some people weren't dead. And it'd never occurred to him which she might be. It hadn't really mattered. Even when she'd pushed him down and put her face real close. It hadn't mattered at all.)

 

“It was easier to think of her like she wasn't there. Like she was dead. So I could just think of her however I wanted,” admitted Shinji. He leaned back in his seat. Her hands had been bandaged, too. He remembered that much, now. “And all that time, she was right there. And she was hurt. She was really, really hurt, and all I could think about was why she wasn't the same Asuka. But she was a person. She was Asuka. She never stopped being Asuka. I just stopped seeing her. Someone once told me I was really kind, but I don't think they knew me very well to say something like that. I was just like those guys, Kaworu. I was just like them.”

To which Nagisa shook his head and laughed like Shinji had just told him a particularly funny joke. Shinji blinked. Nagisa took his hand off of his shoulder. He slid it over Shinji's hand. The bandaged one. He pressed it. It almost hurt.

“That's a very strange thing to say,” said Nagisa, with a cheerfulness Shinji could never quite attribute to anyone but him, “because I have been your monitor for three years now and I think you are very kind. You gave me sheet music and showed me how to play the piano-- and you asked me which one I was. No one else thought to ask something like that.”

“Nagisa. I only--”

“But even besides that,” said Nagisa, and Shinji couldn't avoid his eyes -- not just then, “from what you have told me just now, I think you are very kind.”

Kaworu was always too much. Shinji swallowed. “I'm not,” he said, no longer caring if people glanced over. “I'm really not--”

“You are,” said Kaworu, cutting through the rattling of the train, “and I will tell you why, because it is by your nature as a human being that there will always be two Asukas to you. In that way that there are many of you. There are thousands of you. They are the you’s that exist in the hearts of everyone who knows you.”

“I don't know that many people.”

“--no matter how briefly,” finished Kaworu. He smiled so knowingly that Shinji wondered if he was fourteen and in the cockpit, holding another's life in his hand. “No matter if it was only for a moment. There is a you that comes to live in the heart of all others, because by your nature as human, you cannot ever be fully one with another. You try to reconcile this. You hurt each other, trying to reconcile it, but does it really mean that one is real and the other is not?”

“Of course one is real--”

“But why not the other?”

“Because, because it's not her -- It's not you--”

“It's the Asuka who exists from the bonds that you had with her,” said Kaworu, “and in your heart I am the Nagisa Kaworu who exists because of the bonds you have with me, am I not?”

“....I guess,” said Shinji, who was eighteen, and talking to his roommate.

“You said yourself, you can think of her however you like,” said Nagisa, “and yet now you think of her pain and sadness, and how you would like to be forgiven by her -- though you feel as though you are undeserving of it. The Asuka in your heart is one which is harsh and cruel to you, and yet she is one that you wish to protect. Even though you consider yourself unworthy of her. You think of her, even after all this time.”

“It's selfish.”

“It's gentle.”

“It hurts.”

“Of course. It's love, isn't it?”

“That's not,” Shinji tried to say. He stopped. He started again. “I'm not--”

“Yes, you are,” said Nagisa. “Ikari Shinji, you are very kind.”

Shinji's shoulders moved. His breath caught. He choked before the sentence was out of his head. Nagisa took his hand off the overhead rail and around his shoulders. He pulled him near. Shinji couldn't feel too bad about falling against him, just then. He was too busy feeling a mess of other things.

“You,” he said. “You always say that.”

  
  



End file.
